Broken
by cellotlix
Summary: "You need to find someone who isn't a broken down mess like me." Shepard presses a shaking fist to her eyes and swallows. "Someone whole." Shepard and Kaidan after the Reaper War.


When he sees her for the first time, Kaidan almost doesn't recognize the woman he loves beneath the tubes and plaster binding together her broken bones. The respirator beeps weakly at her side; brief pulses of light that flash across the monitor marking her stubborn heart's refusal to quit, and he might have taken comfort in that had he not seen what her stubbornness is capable of. Her thin chest does not seem capable of capturing breath. How brittle her bones seem, in this sterile, airless place.

He pulls up a chair so that his knees press against the bed and takes her freezing hand in his own. Had they always been so small? He remembers those hands as they were in her last life, clutched around the barrel of a pistol, steady and sure as stone. He remembers how strong her voice was, booming across the battlefield, loud enough to be heard even above the Reapers. That is the woman he knows, not this broken creature bound together from incongruous pieces, slivers of what he remembers battling with what he sees.

It's funny how fear sharpens love into something feral.

The doctors fill the air around them with meaningless worlds: 'touch and go' 'could go either way' 'not out of the woods yet.' But when he leans over her, his hands reaching to brush away her hair before remembering that it's been burned away, he marvels that there is still a place on her body untouched by burns and lacerations, by brokenness.

When he whispers "Shepard," he almost convinces himself that the monitor beside her pauses, as if listening. As if waiting for him to speak again.

* * *

_That first time, she initiates. She captures either side of his face between her two, burning hands, and her kiss scorches the ground beneath their feet. To watch her is to worship, to stand too close is to be consumed. But oh, what pleasure it is, to be burned up in the heart of this star, to match her fire with his own. _

_The second time that night, he takes time to commit her to memory. There are two large freckles that reign over a court of smaller ones on her shoulder, and he counts them a thousand times. His fingers descend the ladder of her ribs, coming to rest in the valley between her hip bones, that gentle swoop taut with muscle, shivering in pleasure._

_"Come here," she whispers, shuddering under his hands._

_But he will not be rushed in this most careful study. "Be patient," he says. "Let me look at you."_

_"You have to look with your hands?"_

_"What better way?"_

_She relents, stretching out on the bed so that her skin pulls tight over muscle and bone, her smile winking at him like daylight. She is beauty made bold under his gaze, and he savors that exchange of power between them – the assurance she knows, the gratitude that wells up in him like a river, that he should be so lucky to see her in this way._

_"You treat me like you've never seen a naked woman before," she laughs softly._

_"What would you say if I told you I haven't?"_

_"Impossible. You're too good to be a virgin."_

_He flushes at the praise. "Happy to be of service." _

_"That's what you call it, huh?" She reaches for him. "You can look later." _

_And they're slow this time; skin sliding over skin, hands trailing up the trench of a spine, the supple skin of buttocks. He is gratified by the slight curve of her hips, the feel of her muscles shifting under his hands as she moves above him. Her lips hover over his, and when he gasps her name she kisses him so deeply he thinks she'll be able to taste his voice on her tongue. _

* * *

He lives beside her bed for weeks, determined to be there when she opens her eyes. The thought of her waking alone in this freezing, sterile places fills him with wordless anguish, because he can put himself in her position so easily, and he knows the first thing he'd want to see was her face, low above his, the familiar shade and depth of her eyes.

The doctors don't believe she'll make it, but Shepard's made a career out of doing the impossible, proving people wrong. She'll have taken their whispered pessimism as a challenge. And indeed, when she opens her eyes that first time, they're focused with determination. They scan the room from force of habit, and only when they meet his gaze do they soften.

"Kaidan," she whispers brokenly, her voice too long unused.

"I'm here," he tell her, holding her frigid hand closer in his. He told himself he was going to be strong when this happened, but his eyes spill over anyway. "Oh, god."

"You look awful," she croaks. He can barely hear her over the racket of the heart monitor. Before she woke it was his closest companion; now, it's an infuriating intruder.

"Yeah."

"When's the last time … you got a decent eight?"

Eight hours of sleep, she means. "Few years."

"Ha." She's crying now, too. "Get on that, Alenko."

"Just as soon as you're out of here."

"Could spring me," she whispers "_Should._"

"Not yet, Sam."

"Please." She struggles, the tubes twisting as she struggles to move her arms, her legs twitching minutely under the hospital blanket. "I can't move," she gasps. "I can't –"

"Shh," he soothes, though watching her panic twists something in his heart. He presses his lips to her forehead, his hands on either side of her face, and how wonderful it is that she responds now, sagging a little into his touch. "You just woke up. One step at a time."

She takes a breath, then another. The heart monitor slows. "Get something … to eat," she orders him, the last word swallowed by an especially loud beep coming from down the hall. The effort of speaking has taxed her completely. "I'll know if you didn't."

"Yes, ma'am," he said. He wipes his eyes and smiles for her benefit. His hand tightens around her own. But when she falls asleep, he does not leave his place by her side. He has not yet learned to take these shallow breaths for granted.

* * *

_Shepard after Lazarus is different. Skin polished like the surface of a new car, the scars buffered away. He'd counted on always being able to trace the ridge cutting across her nose, and the loss of that throws him off balance. He feels like he's looking at a copy that's rendered imperfect by how flawless it is. Her freckles are mostly gone – only a few artificial configurations dot her face. They wouldn't have known to reproduce the ones that covered her arms, her shoulders; those wouldn't have been documented in pictures. He was the only one to have seen them. _

_She's stronger than she was – her body augmented by reinforcements and weave designed to make her indestructible. She could break his wrist into splinters, shatter his knees, sunder bone and leave him broken in a pile on the floor. He's made her angry enough to almost guarantee that outcome, but instead she captures his face in her hands and crushes her lips to his. _

_Tomorrow, he'll be bruised, and so will she. They will float to the surface like blackened flowers. They will mark each other as belonging._

* * *

Shepard throws every ounce of effort she possesses into physical rehabilitation. She pushes herself to the breaking point, and refuses to be brought back to her room until she's satisfied with her progress. She frequently picks fights with her nurses, furious that they impede her progress with their worry.

"You're still recovering," they tell her, a chorus of concern. "You're still weak. You can't expect to go back to business as usual after injuries like yours."

It was almost as if they are trying to drive Shepard harder. She tries to shove her nurses back with her walker. She waits until Kaidan falls asleep before pushing herself out of bed and taking halting steps up and down the hall. More than once, they find her sprawled on the linoleum, silent tears pouring down her face, her eyes simmering with frustration.

"You're going to hurt yourself, and then it'll take even longer," says Kaidan one evening, ever the voice of reason. Outside it rains.

"It's already taking too long," Shepard whispers.

"Why is that?"

She doesn't reply, but he can see that familiar bitterness in her eyes, her brows furrowed low. On the hospital blanket, a tremor ripples up her hands, and he doesn't know if it's from anger or from the nightmares that return every night, when he could no more shield her from them than he could from her pain.

"Let yourself heal," he tells her. "It's not going to happen overnight."

But she turns away from him and he's left with his useless words, which hang in the thick air between them.

* * *

_So he relearns her, after Lazarus. _

_He memorizes this new texture to her skin – impossibly smooth, yet tough as a sheet of steel encasing bone. He learns the shape of muscles, the new weight to her breasts. He memorizes the steady beat of her heart – her machine heart, she likes to call it. _

_She's no machine, though. She responds just as always when he traces his lips over the angle of her jaw, trailing kisses on her shoulder, her neck, the hollow there. She curls and arcs, shivering as he savors that same taste to her skin, the same scent to her hair. _

_"It's still me," she'd said the first time. "Just got a new coat of paint, is all."_

_And he sees the truth of this. Her lips are the same shape, her eyes burn with the same passion. When she pulls him hilt deep, that's the same too. _

* * *

Weeks pass, and she graduates from walker to cane. She is pronounced able to care for herself without help, and therefore released from the hospital. Though she made her nurses miserable, they bid her goodbye while sharing pleased looks between themselves, for they are the professionals who brought Commander Shepard back from the brink, who survived her temper and frustration and produced this limping, upright soldier. And though Shepard would rather choke on her tongue than thank her nurses, she does just that, and only the tightness to her jaw betrays her unhappiness.

It's procedure to discharge patients with a wheelchair, but Shepard stubbornly refuses. She limps through the halls of the hospital with her back straight, her shoulders squared, chin raised. She nods without speaking. She ignores Kaidan's outstretched hand and hoists herself into the car Kaidan's rented, though he sees a flicker of pain cross her features, gone before he can properly note it.

"Where you taking me, soldier?" she asks Kaidan after he starts the car.

"I'm taking you home."

"Wasn't aware I had one," she says. Cheeky. She's happy to be free.

"I set something up while you were out. Technically, it's where I live now, though I haven't been there much lately."

"I thought they'd start charging you rent at the hospital," she jokes. "You were there enough."

He was indeed. He thought the crushing grip of fear would leave him after the weeks passed into uneventful months, but even today he can't look at her without remembering her charging into the beam, without remembering the sight of her growing smaller and smaller until he couldn't see her anymore, knowing full well what waited for her. That red gaze, cutting, crushing, destroying –

A cold sweat breaks out on the back of his neck, and his hands shudder on the steering wheel. But he smiles brightly for her benefit. "You know me. Can't stay away."

"Who could blame you? I'm charming and gorgeous," she says, but her voice has taken a hard edge.

* * *

She tours their new home vaguely. She passes through the bathroom, the bedroom, the living room without engaging before stepping outside. Her hands skim the potted plants on the porch, the windchimes hanging by the sliding door. She gazes out on English Bay and tucks a stubborn strand of hair behind her ear, gripping the railing tightly, and at that moment he is terrified by how remote she seems, as if they are strangers.

"What do you think?" he asks her.

"It's nice," she said, and she smiles. He's so relieved by her assurance that he doesn't note the tightness at her eyes.

"They would have given me anything I asked for, and I asked for this. Bayfront property is pretty valuable, you know."

"I wouldn't know," she says distantly. "I grew up on ships, remember?"

"Of course." He threads an arm around her waist and presses his lips to her temple, savoring the steady pulse there. "It'll be nice here."

"I'll take your word for it," she says, smiling again. But before they head inside, she casts one final look to the sky, and he wonders if she is swallowing her sadness for his sake, if she really does miss the thrum of a spaceship beneath her feet, the engine almost like a heartbeat.

* * *

She imposes a strict routine on herself. At 0500 sharp she wakes, drops to the ground and does pushups until her arms can't bear her weight any longer, and as the days pass that number grows higher. She stakes out a regular place at the Alliance HQ, training as well as she can with a limp and cane. She spends afternoons at the range, honing her marksmanship until it's better than it was before the Reapers.

She works harder than any person Kaidan has ever known, and he includes himself in that number. Put in her position, he doesn't think he could attack each day like she does, fiercely as she did in those war-bright days.

"You don't give yourself enough credit," she says when he tells her this. "You do your job despite the migraines."

"Your injuries are much worse than a migraine," he says carelessly.

"Are they?" Her voice is cold, and too late he realizes how she'd interpret this.

"I didn't mean—" he says quickly, but she's already limping to the car, heading back to HQ. She doesn't come back for hours and when she returns, she can barely walk. Her bad leg shakes, and she clutches her cane in a white-knuckled grip. Tears pool at her eyes, but when he reaches out to touch her, she flinches away.

He minds what he says better after that.

* * *

Kaidan often thought of what their lives would be like when the Reapers were defeated; in fact, many days it was this thought alone that sustained him. He thought of a home in Vancouver, on English Bay, close enough that they could lean over their porch and stare into the calm navy depths. He thought of sleeping beside Shepard every night, the two of them entwined beneath the sheets, hands free to roam where they willed. He thought of being able to make love freely, without waiting for the inevitable interruption.

The reality is different. He got the home he always wanted, but Shepard limps through the rooms as quietly as she can manage in her condition. She is cold, withdrawn. She is plagued by nightmares, and when she thinks he's not looking, she balls her fists into her eyes, taking ragged, gasping breaths until the flashbacks stop.

It wasn't this bad in the beginning. But as the weeks march on and her limp refuses to abate, something hardens within her. When he presses his lips to hers, they are stiff and unyielding, and he wonders if her feelings for him have faded. When he touches her cheek, she avoids his gaze. When he reaches for her in bed, she wiggles away.

He isn't selfish. He expected this to be a long road. He is careful not to demand anything from Shepard, though at times the desire he still feels for her grows too unwieldy to manage. He bears it, because her pain is worse. Her suffering far eclipses his.

So they go on, like strangers some days. Ships passing in the night.

* * *

He's making breakfast one morning when he hears her cry out, followed by a crash so strong that it shakes the floor, makes the pan rattle on the stove. He switches it off and rushes into their room, smashing the bathroom door panel so roughly that it fractures under his fist. It whooshes open to reveal Shepard sprawled naked on the floor, hair in her eyes, face red with fury.

She's shuddering with sobs, her body convulsing from the force of them. But she recoils when she notices him. "Don't look at me!" she sobs. "Go away!"

"Shepard, what -?"

She throws her cane at him, and it misses him by a good half foot, clattering sadly behind him. "Get out!"

Something breaks in him. He sees the woman he loves sprawled on the ground, broken by her injuries and her pride, by the desperate need to be used. He sees Shepard as she was – bright and powerful, fire made flesh – and Shepard as she is today, bound together not by desire but by pain, by mended bones and wounds and fury, by shuddering nightmares that haunt her still. He looks down at this woman he loves and could no more leave her than he could lay down and die.

He speaks softly, now. "Are you hurt?"

She shakes her head, gulping deep breaths, willing herself to be calm, to be under control. But it's a losing battle – her lips tremble against sobs, and her hands shake so badly that she can't keep them balled into fists – the better to bludgeon away this weakness.

He kneels at her side, draping a towel around her shoulders, and she pulls it tightly around her thin body. "What happened?"

"I slipped," she said through her teeth, though it comes out strange; lurching from a hiss to whisper.

He digests this. "You want to tell me what's going on with you now?"

"No," she bites out, but he can hear the fractures in her resolve, the way her voice trembles with restrained sobs, her hands bunched at her throat, wrinkling the towel there. She doesn't have the strength to bear his concern. She's never been able to look him in the eyes and resist.

"It was supposed to be better by now," she whispers. "I was supposed to be better. I was supposed to be back on my ship, back in action. Doing things. Helping." She swallows a bitter noise. "I can't even get out of the shower."

"That why you've been pushing me away?"

She won't look at him, but he sees two tears track down her face. "How could you stand to look at me?" she chokes. "How could you stand to look at this?"

"How couldn't I?" he says gently. "I love you, you know that."

She's quiet now, steeling herself. "You shouldn't. You should – you should find someone else."

"What?! What the hell are you talking about?!"

"I said you should find someone else," she says. "Someone better."

"I don't want anyone else," he insists. "Why are you talking like this?"

She rounds on him, and the dam has broken. "Because I'm hideous!" she shouts, her cheeks splotchy, her eyes bright as the surface of the bay. "I'm disgusting! I look in the mirror and can't recognize myself! Who is this flimsy person, with scars and a limp? It's not me. It's … it's not me, dammit.

"And I'm so weak! I assaulted a Reaper on the ground with one hundred and fifty pounds of ordinance and armor strapped to my back, and now look at me! I can't even get out of the shower without stumbling. I – I can barely walk up a flight of stairs. I'm tired after two hours at HQ. I'm always so _damn tired!"_

"And – and every night I'm back there at the end. I'm at the Crucible. I'm seeing you dead in rubble. I see explosions above my head and know that somewhere, there's someone who's going to get the news that their loved one isn't coming home. And I see - I see it all. Every fucking night. And I can't take it."

"Shepard—"

"I mean it. You need to find someone who isn't a broken down mess like me." She presses a shaking fist to her eyes and swallows. "Someone _whole." _

"Shepard," he says so gently, because he knows that one wrong step and he'll shatter her. "I told you I was in this for the long haul. Thick and thin. Good and bad. I'm here for the powerful, kick your ass Shepard, and I'm here for the Shepard who needs help putting away groceries."

"Goddammit, Kaidan, it's not fair to you –"

"I'll decide what's fair for me and what isn't, okay?" He cups her cheek, wipes away a solitary tear with his thumb. "If you were sick of me and wanted me to leave, I'd go, no questions asked. But I don't think that's what's happening here. Is it?"

She shakes her head.

"So let me help you. Let me be here for you."

She looks at him as if she had never seen the shape of him before, and maybe in a way she hadn't. They had never gotten the chance for this kind of love – this patient, healing love that flowed deep beneath the surface, currents powerful as the blood of the earth. It had always been flash and fire – first from novelty, then from anger, then from those heady wartime days where they expected each touch to be their last.

She kisses him tentatively. Though he's laid his heart bare for her, there is still a broken, shriveled part of her that expects him to recoil when their lips touch, when his hand slides up her back, skimming the skin that is no longer smooth and scarless, but ridged and tough where it knit together.

"Are you sure?" he whispers when her hands pull at his buckle.

Before, she might have joked: 'do I need to spell it out any clearer for you, Alenko?' she'd say with a grin like a flash. But she has changed in these last months; laughter is unfamiliar on her lips. It's out of place here, in this bare moment. "Yes," she whispers.

Each kiss she offers is a question, an opportunity to end this before it begins, but he answers in the way he knows best; to be steady and stable, to be a rock for her to stand on, a safe place in her storm. He sweeps her into his arms and gently lays her on their bed, the sheets mused around her, hair fanned out. She clutches the towel in two desperate hands.

"Kaidan –" she breathes, and he sees for the first time that Commander Shepard, savior of the galaxy, is terrified. He can see that fear reflected in her eyes as plainly as if it was tattooed on her beloved features; fear that he will pull away the towel and find her ugly, that he will be unable to swallow his revulsion, that he will mourn that she no longer resembles the strong woman he'd loved.

"Shh." Slowly, he pulls the towel away and she is bare before him. How he wishes she would believe that her fear is in vain, for he is well practiced in relearning her body, and in this moment he considers there to be no greater joy. There are new scars he will memorize, trenched and jagged, running up the lengths of her thighs. There are mottled patches on her stomach, her breasts, her hips from where her armor melted into her skin. She watches him with tight eyes, her lips pressed firmly together, waiting for his horror, but he lays his palms flat on her belly instead– that blessed valley between her hips, and savors her as he hasn't been able to in months.

"You're so beautiful," he whispers.

She makes a derisive sound in the back of her throat. "Do you even recognize this broken down, busted –"

"I'm looking right at you, and I don't see broken," he tells her softly. "I see you."

And finally, she believes him. He watches her swallow these words and hold them close to her heart, where he hopes they will provide some relief from her pain, some light in this darkness. When he slides his hands up her stomach to cup her breasts, she closes her eyes and a low, wanting sound catches in the back of her throat. When he positions himself over her – carefully, so carefully – she grips him, her hands curled into strength, holding his arms, his waist, whatever she can touch.

She peels his shirt off his back, up over his head. She pulls at the buckle of his pants until it gives way, pulling them down. She drinks him in as he did only moments before. He knows he's not the same man he was that first time; he has more grey in his hair, for one, and his migraines are more frequent. He's got a few new scars, a few more aches and pains than he did before. But she looks at him just as she did then, with want so large to speak of it would be impossible.

And her lips – oh, her lips. Those are just the same too. That gasp as he plunges into her, as he moves above her, balancing like a trapeze artist high above the world. She moves with him just as before, and laughs when he does – from the sheer pleasure of it. When he moans, so she does; when his lips seek the thrumming pulse at her neck she arches into him, taut and thrumming like a bowstring. When he slides his hand under her buttocks and drives deeper, she curls, she tightens, she cries out, so loudly the birds on their porch take flight and disappear into the darkening sky.

"Oh, god –" she gasps, her hands bunched into fists, the sheets twisting in her grasp. "Oh – oh god –"

He doesn't stop. He is in that high place himself, filling her deeply, moving faster until he can only see stars before his eyes in the shape of her eyes, until he can only breathe the scent of her – hot and heady, that salt on her skin – until he can only gasp her name, curling into her until his face is buried in her neck, and still his climax rolls through him like thunder, like rain, and he is spiraling higher, higher –

And when he comes down, she is there. That is her hand, brushing aside a loose tendril of his hair, brushing aside the sweat on his brow. Those are her fingers, trailing up his back until he shivers. Those are her eyes, fathomless as always. And that is her smile – and god, how long has it been since he saw it?

"Thank you," she whispers after a long time, well after the sun has gone down. And the way she says it, he know she means 'I love you.'

He leans over and presses his ear to her chest, his fingers lightly resting on her breast, and savors the sound of her steady heart beating – not a machine heart, but the heart of the woman he loves more than his own life.

"You know? Doesn't sound broken to me," he tells her.


End file.
